Elizabeth Lederer

Elizabeth Lederer was an American Assistant District Attorney in New York City and the lead attorney for the prosecution in the Central Park jogger case of 1990.

Biography
Elizabeth Lederer was born in New York City, New York to a Jewish family, and she became an attorney and later an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan. In 1989, sex crimes unit leader Linda Fairstein had Lederer replace Nancy Ryan as the lead attorney for the prosecution in the Central Park jogger case. Lederer knew that the five boys on trial had been told what to say by the NYPD, and was asked to "play fair" by defense attorney Mickey Joseph, but she ultimately built a compelling case by using Korey Wise and Bobby McCray's own testimonies against them, by showing the boys' confession tapes, and by using physical evidence from Kevin Richardson's underwear to implicate the boys in the beating and rape of Trisha Meili. She continued to practice law in New York into the 2010s, although she had a much lower profile than Fairstein.